CITIZEN SPADE: PROLOGUE

The history of humanity can be divided into two parts: that which came before the Singularity, and that which came after. Two and a half million years before the Singularity, humanities’ ancestors stood upright and wandered out into the world. They survived, using simple stone tools, for over a million years before they learned to control fire. They hunted game, gathered food, and lived in fear of the dark, protected by their fires, for over a millions years more until some of them learned to till the earth and raise livestock, sometime around 15,000 BC. Slowly, but with ever increasing speed, civilizations were born. Stone gave way to bronze around 3,000 BC. Cultures grew. Empires were built. Wars were fought. Bronze gave way to iron around 1,500 BC. Technology advanced slowly, but with ever increasing speed. To understand the world around them, humans developed philosophy and science, art and literature. As humans began to understand the movements of the heavens, the changes in the winds, and the flows of the currents, they journeyed further from their native shores. Beliefs and ideas were exchanged as different cultures met, traded, and warred. With every exchange, both peaceful and violent, knowledge was traded as well as goods. Some fought for the knowledge, others fought against it. The march of technology was ever onward. As the dark ages fell on some corners of the world, other places burned brightly, keeping the knowledge safe. By the 16th century, almost 500 years before the Singularity, humans knew the shape of their world and they were beginning to understand the true nature of those things outside their world, in the heavens above, the stars and planets. With each passing age the technological advances of civilizations around the world marched onward. Then, in 1750, the industrial revolution began; the march of technology became unstoppable. It had taken roughly 1.5 million years to learn to control fire, another 1 million years before agriculture developed, and then only 16,000 additional years before humanity reached industrial technology. Technological advancement had been expanding rapidly but at a pace only observed over generations. With the advent of industrialization, technology advanced many times over within a single lifetime. Its impact was felt worldwide. It changed nearly every aspect of daily life for much of the world’s population. The advent of industrialization was the most significant event in human history since the advent of agriculture.

The demands of industrialization required automation. Steam powered machines replaced physical labor. Machines were invented to produce on massive scales not previously known in history. Many of them were designed to perform a specific function repetitively, operated and controlled my humans. But one such device took an extra step to eliminate the need for human control. Its functions would be changeable, programmable. In 1801, a French man invented a loom which produced fabric whose pattern was determined, not by the hands of skilled weavers, but wooden cards. Thousands of wooden cards were fed through the machine during operation. The pattern of the punched holes in the cards determined the pattern of its weaving. Thus, the first programmable machine was born from the iron forges of the industrial revolution. The French man’s punched cards would lead to other programmable machines. But these machines would not produce. They would calculate and compute.

Spade closed his eyes and closed the book. He laid in his bed thinking, trying to contemplate how it was that the world came to be. How had the world gone from one of iron and steel to a world of circuitry? That world seemed so far away from his own.

Before the Singularity. After the Singularity.

He opened his eyes to the dim light of his reading lamp. He dimmed it further and slid the book back under his bed, between the frame and mattress. He had to hide most of his books from his father, who disapproved of his “self education.” Next time the Trader came through he would try to find more history books. He wanted to know more about the major events just before the Singularity. Not just the stories and myths told in the communities outside the cities but the real history about the flooding of the coasts and the world pandemic, about the decline in population and the migrations to the city centers. Most importantly, Spade wanted to understand more about the AIs and the Singularity itself. He wanted to know more about life extension and the neuro-cybernetic enhancements that the Traders from the cities spoke of. Spade closed his eyes again. What he really wanted was to be a Citizen.